Bloopers: Burglar was pregnant man?

TOWN SQUARE

Sometimes the best news stories inadvertently are underplayed. For example, consider this online headline for a story that received scant attention:

"Drunk and expecting child, man burglarized property."

I'm guessing he didn't climb through a window, unless his pregnancy was in its very early stages.

I've had such a long gap since my last blooper column that some of the old ones I had been saving seem to have disappeared from our computer system. This means I'll have to start from scratch with newer ones.

Luckily, the media tend to be pretty cooperative when it comes to supplying odd headlines, misplaced modifiers, bad spelling and other odd errors, so I'll have no trouble delivering a full column of them today.

For example, it's bad enough that I've been giving U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent a hard time over the gerrymandering of his 15th Congressional District, but conservatives are sniping at him, too. Consider this criticism from a press release:

"Americans for Prosperity, the premier free market grassroots mobilizing group, today launched a nationwide radio campaign targeting Representative Charlie Dent and other congressional Republicans. Despite their rhetoric to the contrary, these powerful appropriators are failing to cut enough in their first minibus appropriations bill to prevent billions of dollars worth of spending increases."

In his defense, I would argue that it's great he's going green by using a minibus appropriations bill rather than one of those gas-guzzling omnibus bills.

Here's another startling story: "After more than a year at the Lehigh County Humane Society, a Fountain Hill couple …"

The reader who sent me this one wrote, "I wonder if the couple were caged or allowed to freely roam the grounds? Are they up for adoption, too?"

Or how about this one, from a Reuters story with a Kabul, Afghanistan, dateline: "An Afghan policeman shot dead taxi driver Mohammad Jawid Amiri six months ago, for no apparent reason." Can there be a more senseless crime than shooting someone who's already dead?

Perhaps most startling of all was a recent Scope section chart on the 2012 Hyundai Sonata, including its gas economy:

"Mileage: 24 city/357 hwy"

Under the circumstances, I would try to stick to highway driving as much as possible.

Another story offered an interesting variation on a common theme involving reassurance from God. "He jumped out of bed and saw a glowing white presence. He saw a hand and bright white rope." The reader, a minister, said she's heard many stories where the presence wore a white robe, but none involving a rope. She asked, "Was it perpendicular, horizontal, limp, long or short, in a noose?"

A letter to the editor this fall noted, "We are sickened by the fact that we must debate vial and disgusting issues …" The reader wrote, "I guess debating small containers can be sickening, especially if they contain disgusting issues."

In another particularly unfortunate example of bad spelling, an ad for a program dedicated to "Reaching higher for quality early learning" noted that it is "NOW EXCEPTING NEW ENROLLMENT" and that among its selling points is "Assistance Excepted."

One last one before I jump to some quick-hitters. A recent op-ed column noted, "He nearly broke the Bank of England by shorting the British pound and was convicted in France of insider training."

"Gee," the reader wrote, "I didn't know there was training for insider trading!"